Billy Elliot the Forum

If you ever wondered what happened on the old forum, you are going to love this!

Thanks to StevenKing for finding it. Some links work quite well. There is quite a treasure trove here. Enjoy exploring.

http://web.archive.org/web/200804231556 ... /index.php

I started poking around, and forgot about everything else I have to do here at work, as well as other catching-up online. Beware, if you go to that site, you may be sucked into a time vortex!!!

Sean

But it's a GOOD vortex, yes?

YES!!!

I've looked before on archive sites but lost a proper old link to the old forum and constantly it brought up only archived shots of the new one...but last night decided to dig deep and got one that didn't redirect to the new one. Suprised we never found it in 5 years. It's full of holes but there's like 110 plus different archived copies of varies dates and some are more deeply archived then others so most of the old old stuff might be there...of particular interest and pure GOLD is if the Gallery has any real pics...at least thumbnails are there from the little I've looked so no idea if the actual pics are saved in any of the copies, if they are please link because that bloody hurt when those went away!!! A lot of the later posts seem to be gone for sure...late 2006 seems to be the most heavily archived. All my bear posts are gone...only the thread link remains

So to use the new term I'm crowd sourcing this mining effort...get cracking!!!

This just goes to prove the saying about being careful what you put on the internet, because it will be there forever. Nice work Steven!

NEVER put something on the internet you plan to delete later...from experience its not possible to delete something that can be copied millions of times with almost zero effort.

Hmmm. I must be doing something wrong. Every page I try to go to on there, when I click on it it says, "Wayback Machine doesn't have that page archived."

Each calendar date that is highlighted in blue should take you to a cached page image. On some of those pages, you may be able click on links within posts and get to something else, but in lots of cases, those links don't work any more. It isn't like the whole forum has been restored, but what you can see is very interesting. You just have to keep trying different dates and links to see what happens.

For example, when I went to September 24 of 2008, and then clicked on LONDON at the top of the page under Image Galleries, I ended up on a gallery page. I then clicked on the link for Gala Night - November 22nd 2006, and came to this:


http://web.archive.org/web/200810181728 ... p?album=71

The thumbnails will not expand, but at least you can see them.

Here's another example:

http://web.archive.org/web/200810181730 ... p?album=88